I've been using mythtv for about 2 years now and I thought I'd try out linuxmce. My hardware is a PVR-500 with a Dish Network Receiver connected by composite inputs. I use a home build IR transmitter to control the receiver from mythtv.

Right now I've installed a Core/Hybrid but I'm having a few troubles.

1. How do I select the composite input on the PVR-500? The only options that show up in the admin page are "PVR 500 - Tuner1" and "PVR 500 - Tuner2"

2. How do I use the IR transmitter? Currently I have a custom lirc.conf that I created so I'll need to import that as well.

To install the PVR using the composite input I just ran mythtv-setup directly. Is that the correct approach?

Regarding the IR blaster - do I need to install lirc and the lirc-serial modules myself? I've done that in the past but I would have assumed that they would be part of linuxmce. Any of the other distros that include myth such as mythdora or mythknoppix include lirc by default.

I see that the GC100 is the recommended controller for IR devices. If I order one which accessory is required for transmitting IR? The devices I see all seem to be receivers not transmitters.

Are other people actually using linuxmce with myth or should I regard this project as cool but not ready for use? I don't mean this as an insult but myth has been our only TV watching method for the last 2 years and I need a certain level of reliability.

I'm still a little curious about LIRC. It seems that in the mythtv world everyone uses it. Is the linuxmce not interested in LIRC somehow or do most people just buy the GC100 and go that route.

I currently have 2 myth frontend boxes setup to boot diskless (using fedora). I'd like to move those over to being diskless MD's. I have serial IR receivers on each. Do I need to but a GC100 for each location (or run wires)?

lirc, even though it is very pervasive in the linux world, is a very cumbersome system to set up and get working correctly, and I never understood why lirc was implemented as a hybrid set of kernel and user space tools. The IRT that LinuxMCE works best with, is the USB-UIRT, which does all its processing on itself, and is much easier to implement system-wise. Installation is typically plug-and-play.